In the early 1970s, a group named Bread recorded a song called Diary. It begins, “I found your diary underneath the tree and started reading about me.”

I had a similar experience. When I was in my early 20s, I was dating a girl who one day left her diary unattended. Cad that I am, I looked in it to see if she said anything about me. What I read was shocking.

“I’m dating a guy named John,” she wrote. “I really like him, but he’s kind of short.”

Kind of short? I had never thought of myself as short. All through high school and beyond, I’d always felt like my stature was the same as most everyone else.

Recently, I told some friends the story about reading that girl’s diary and what a shock it had been to learn I was short. Do you know what one of them said to me? “Didn’t you ever look in a mirror?”

Thanks a lot. Yes, I did. But the mirror was at my height, not that of some basketball player. (As you can tell, I’m not at all sensitive about this subject.)

According to the CDC, the average height of American men is 5 foot 9. I am 5 foot 6. So I am, indeed, short. I have to content myself with being Frodo, not Aragorn, and asking people in stores to get items off upper shelves for me. (Don’t tell, but I have, in the absence of taller passersby, used something long, like a loaf of French bread, to topple items off a high shelf.)

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me to check the height of the average Italian man. I am half Italian, so would be comforted if Italian men were, on average, short. Because of the age we live in, I didn’t have to fly to Italy with a tape measure and check the height of hundreds of men. Someone else had already done that. All I had to do is search for the results on the Internet. Italian men, it turns out, are not short. In fact, the average male height in Italy is 5 foot 9 1/2. And to make it worse, in Southern Italy where my people came from, it’s 5 foot 10.

According to my DNA, I’ve got some English and Scottish in me. No comfort. Both average 5 foot 9. Dang. Somewhere in the world, there must be people I can see eye to eye with. And there are.

According to a chart on Wikipedia, out of a list of 201 countries, there are 12 where the average male height is 5 foot 6. And there are 25 with average male heights lower than that. And though I’m sure all those countries are lovely, none of them are places I want to live just to reach items on top shelves.

So if you see me out shopping, don’t be surprised if there’s a loaf of French bread in my cart.